Probably not the best thing I've ever written, but bear with me, my loves!
"Aww, fuck."
Liam stuck out his bottom lip and held up his guitar mournfully. A string was coiled up at the end. "I killed her."
"Her?" Michael was draped over a sofa. He said he was 'investigating some ideas'. Alex had commented that he wasn't, he was 'dicking about with a punk version of Nellie The Elephant'. Alex himself was sitting on the floor sketching Charlie, and Ed was drinking tea, staring into space and nursing his hangover.
"Yeah, her. She's called Kaleigh."
Alex looked up. "Didn't you go out with a girl called Kaleigh?"
"No, I went to a ceilidh."
Michael frowned. "A what?"
"It's like a rave, but with penny whistles and whiskey."
"Do you all have to talk so fricking loud?" croaked Ed, swilling his tea in its cup.
Finally, Alex stood up. "I'm going to get you a new string, Liam. Ed, you need to go home, take an aspirin, and delete that girl from your contacts. Michael, you're not a member of the Toy Dolls. And Charlie, you can blink. We're going to make this damn album!" Alex's inspirational speech was rather ruined by him adding, "Charlie, will you come with me? The stock room's full of spiders."
Charlie, naturally, stood up and traipsed out of the studio.
It was three seconds after Alex had told the story about the time he had been round at his Grandma's and a spider crawled into his soup, and he had to eat it because he was too embarrassed to say what had happened, that the lights went out. They abruptly stopped giggling. "Alex..." whispered Charlie.
"Yeah?"
"I think it's fused."
"Yeah."
"Alex..."
"Yeah?"
"I've...I've never told you this...but...I'm...I'm...scared...of the dark," the last three words tumbled out, on the back of a blush that no-one saw.
Charlie could see that, even in the darkness, Alex's eyes were shining, but not with amusement. With concern.
"Aww, Charlie," he cooed.
Charlie cleared his throat. "Yeah, well. I'm not four years old. I can manage."
But still, as Charlie moved closer to Alex, the latter could feel a fast, loud heartbeat. As they made their way through the pitch-black corridor, Charlie moved steadily closer to Alex. Then, he wrapped his arm around Alex's. "For protection," he said, quietly, in as manly a voice as he could muster. Alex stopped. "Charlie..." He couldn't finish his sentence.
Charlie looked round at him. "What?"
Alex shook his head and squeezed Charlie's hand. "Nothing. For protection, yeah?"
He revelled in the warmth of Alex's hand.